


That Distance was between Us

by middlemarch



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Poldark (TV 2015), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Friendship, Gen, Reunions, Romance, Television Watching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8570059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Stark on Poldark.





	

“Pepper! Pep-per! Come on, it’s starting!” Tony called from the couch, a long leather boa constrictor of a sofa, curling around the perimeter of the room, endless yards of suede and the joy of the designer’s heart. He had seen how much Asher had loved that couch, so he bought it, even though it was insane and even he knew it. 

He’d adjusted the lights already, reaching the inflection point needed to cancel out the light of the arc reactor, which he’d found was much easier to do with the pot lights in the media room than with candles, but when duty, romantic in this case, called, he found he could generally get within one candle’s balance but it was best not to press his luck to reach perfection as Pepper was not quite so taken with Barry White’s Greatest Hits as he’d expected. Who had thought he’d be the sentimental one? Well, Pepper, and Steve, and Natasha had positively hooted, if you could actually hoot with a Russian accent, when he’d made the remark and Darcy had rolled her eyes but it was the Number 9 eye-roll, not the Number 6, so he got the point.

Pepper wouldn’t, not this episode’s, if she didn’t high-tail it away from her laptop and matcha green tea and whatever noble work she was plowing through. She’d relented a few weeks ago and moved back in and he knew enough not to say too much about seeing her in her ratty USC tee-shirt or the decidedly non-ratty Hamilton one he thought quite fetching and inspiring and that he’d better wait to tell her Lin-Manuel had sent him himself when Tony had called in a favor after hearing Pepper humming in the shower. He wasn’t supposed to be in the general vicinity of the shower when she was there, at least not then, so he’d managed to keep his mouth shut and she hadn’t thought to ask Jarvis. That rule had lasted about 42.47 hours but discretion was the better part of valor, not that Thor understood that. Or Steve. At least Tony Stark was capable of learning.

“Pepper! The pasties will get cold!”

There was ale to go with them in pewter tankards and a nubbly afghan to huddle beneath if the wind off the sea seemed chilly on-screen; certainly there would be at least three cutaways to that watercolor vista, one with Demelza slightly off center and her red-gold hair nothing but a mass of tendrils like a mermaid’s. Watching Poldark had been Pepper’s idea, but Tony’d found it massively entertaining. He wasn’t alone; Jarvis had positively clucked at him for watching but his AI was remarkably well-informed about a program he found “melodramatic and predictable, sir.” Tony had spent a delicious afternoon designing a series of pumps for Wheal Grace to 2016 building code, American and British and EU considering the ramifications of Brexit, and mapping the maze of Wheal Leisure and configuring a scaffold that would have allowed safe and lucrative mining of the expected copper and also allowing for a pocket of uranium to be found. He couldn’t truly grasp Ross’s absorption with Elizabeth when Demelza was so absolutely tempting once she lost the drab turban and the scruffy dog was fattened, groomed, and relegated to a cushion before the hearth, but he had to give the man credit for being a dashing cad as well as the first man of the neighborhood and he had a way with a set of garters and a fade-to-black.

“Pep--” he called for the third time, well, really yelled over Laura Linney’s recap and the opening chords, the Viking cruise ship already in dry-dock, but he was interrupted by Pepper sitting right beside him, telling him to “hush already, Tony!” and so he tried to be debonair and offer a pasty, no longer piping hot but still appealingly authentic, as they should be having been expressed from the best pub in Truro. They weren’t exactly light but he hadn’t ordered meringues. He wasn’t shocked when she demurred and not worried either; they looked like they’d reheat well, around 1 am.

“So, will he really do it?” Tony asked, mostly to see Pepper smile and turn her face toward him. She was still wearing an elaborate Disney-inspired braid when she wasn’t at work, all sleek and sophisticated, Wang and Fisher and a little curated Narcisco, and he liked to get lost in the fractal quality of the homely weaving, the strands that were the purest gold, the ones that glowed copper, the colorless ones that together read as starlight or glacier.

“He’s Ross Poldark. He’ll do whatever he wants and it’ll go terribly wrong and he’ll nearly come a cropper and then he won’t. And Demelza and Elizabeth will each make big eyes at him and George too, but George will do that little dancing-fisticuff thing first,” Pepper said, settling herself, leaning against him cozily. He’d missed this when she left, as he’d missed her in their bed, at the breakfast table eating something egg-whitey and healthy, tossing her sweaters on the floor where they lay like big cats, African lions and Pacific jaguars, lazy and imminently dangerous to a distracted scientist with a brilliant idea or drunk off his ass. 

“‘Come a cropper?’ Have you been reading more steampunk? Pepper?” he said, knowing she would shush him again. Ross hadn’t anyone who could properly shush him, which Tony supposed was why he ended up nearly hanged or bayonetted or bankrupt every episode. If only Aunt Agatha was unleashed…

“Tony. You asked me to come watch this and we could just as easily stream it tomorrow. Can’t you be quiet? I want to see whether the doctor can actually diagnose anything this time,” Pepper said and Tony relented. They’d had a good night the evening Dwight Enys finally figured out scurvy and Tony couldn’t be jealous of a fictional character, not very much, not when Pepper let him call her Virginia with the pale blue light of the reactor on her lips, her cheeks, the limned curve of her breasts, let him promise to never be so stupid again, never so foolish, Virginia, Virginia…

“Poldark! Okay, I’ll shut up now. I don’t need to yell it every time,” he agreed and swallowed some ale, cold and with fine bubbles that prickled along his throat, handing Pepper the bottle as Ross never did to Demelza. Pepper drank and set the bottle down and they waited to see what Wheal Grace would yield. Disaster was never very far away but it never lingered either, which was something Tony found as appealing as Pepper’s clavcle, and just as worth watching.

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me as I was going to bed and I thought it was hilarious so I tried to write it out-- not sure if I have totally gotten the sheer manic joy of Tony Stark but that's the intent.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson. The Truro is the Cornish one, not the Cape.


End file.
